The LSU College of Engineering announced the selection of Judy Wornat as the new permanent dean of the college on Jan. 24, continuing her tenure as the interim dean which began in July of 2015.
“We are pleased to name Dr. Judy Wornat as dean of the LSU College of Engineering,” LSU President F. King Alexander said in a news release. “This is an exciting time for our engineering students, faculty and staff as the renovations to Patrick F. Taylor Hall are coming to completion, giving LSU the largest standalone engineering facility in the country. Under Dean Wornat’s leadership, we look forward to continued growth and the continued rise of our College of Engineering.”
Wornat grew up in southern Louisiana. Born in Houma, she moved frequently thanks to her father’s work as an engineer in sulphur mines. She spent time in Thibodaux and Port Sulphur before finally settling down on the West Bank of New Orleans.
After graduating high school, Wornat received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She then continued her education at MIT, receiving both her master’s degree and doctorate of science in chemical engineering.
After completing her education, Wornat bounced around the world as a chemical engineer, working in Australia and for Sandia National Laboratories in California before returning to the academic world as a professor at Princeton University. Wornat found herself in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering as it was the department at Princeton where combustion research was done.
“Particularly on the aerospace side, a lot of the research I’ve done as a faculty member has been more with aerospace applications, but still using chemistry,” she said.
Wornat spent eight years at Princeton, but decided to move back to Louisiana, primarily to be closer to her parents. Because she had spent much of her life far from home, she felt a need to move closer.
Wornat said she felt a little out of place in the mechanical engineering department at Princeton.
“I liked the idea of being in a chemical engineering department again,” Wornat said. “The kind of students I was looking to do research with me, I wanted them to already have organic chemistry and things like that, and that’s not common if you’re drawing from a mechanical engineering college. A lot of them picked mechanical engineering so they wouldn’t have to take those kinds of courses.”
Wornat continued as a professor at the University, beginning as an associate professor on tenure. Rising through the ranks, she served as the LSU Department of Chemical Engineering’s director of graduate studies, from 2005 to 2011, and as the department chair from 2011-15. Since July 2015, she has served as the interim dean of the College of Engineering.
After a five month search, the University settled on Wornat to continue serving as the dean of the College in a permanent role.
“I can fully appreciate that there could be any number of really good people who could have this job. It turns out they did pick me, and I realize a lot of responsibility goes with that, and I’m gonna certainly do the best I can,” Wornat said. “But it’s a team effort. The success of the College of Engineering is not a one person effort. It’s a matter of all of us feeling like we’re all working toward the right things for the students, for the faculty, for the companies that hire our people, and for LSU as a whole.”
Looking forward, Wornat hopes to continue improving on three main fronts: providing more opportunities for current students to build industry experience while still in school, continuing to attract top-class faculty to the college and working toward attracting more top-quality freshmen to the University.
Many college students are nervous about their prospects once they leave college. Many “entry-level” positions require years of relevant experience, and that experience is difficult to build while still in school. Wornat said she hopes to streamline the process of combining co-op and internship opportunities with being a full-time student, making sure students aren’t stranded academically if they take a semester off to work toward their future.
“We’re trying to work on that problem to try to make it where if a student decides to take time to do a co-op, that they don’t have to pay that price when they come back,” Wornat said. “We really do believe that the success of our students is the success of our college. We want so badly that when a person chooses to come to the LSU College of Engineering to pursue their education that they know that this college cares about every aspect of them.”
Wornat is also looking to attract more high-quality faculty in areas relevant to Louisiana, specifically energy, coast and waterways, health care and biotech, infrastructure and manufacturing.
Wornat is looking to continue attracting more top-level incoming freshmen by increasing the number of scholarships available through the college. The goal is to make the University especially attractive to out-of-state students, as well as keeping top-level Louisiana freshmen in-state as TOPS funding is being cut.
New engineering dean discusses new initiatives
By Chris Clarke
February 1, 2017
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